Understanding childhood respiratory diseases is essential for future healthcare professionals, caregivers, and educators. Teaching these conditions effectively requires hands-on learning tools that allow students to recognize symptoms. The Common Respiratory Diseases Baby provides an interactive way to explore conditions like asthma, pneumonia, and bronchiolitis using a realistic toddler manikin. In this blog, we’ll explore how this versatile tool enhances respiratory disease education and prepares learners for real-world caregiving scenarios.
Simulates 6 Childhood Respiratory Diseases
The Common Respiratory Diseases Baby simulates the common cold, bronchiolitis/RSV, strep throat, pneumonia, croup, and asthma. Sound complicated? Using the simulator is easy! Simply flip the power switch and press the clearly labeled button for the illness you want the manikin to simulate.
Mimics Lifelike Symptoms
This toddler manikin simulates symptoms of childhood respiratory diseases like flaring nostrils, lips and extremities turning blue, and coughing and wheezing. The inside of its mouth also rotates to show a healthy mouth versus one with strep throat or other illnesses. Its stomach even moves with the manikin’s breath! Watch the video below to see it in action.
Engages All VARK Learning Styles
With this simulator, students can engage in visual learning by seeing symptoms like the strep throat pus in the manikin’s mouth and the blue feet of croup. Auditory learners will hear the coughing and wheezing of asthma. Those who learn from reading and writing can read through the included scenario cards and write out their responses to key questions. Students can also participate in kinesthetic learning by rocking the sick toddler to practice comfort and nurture skills.
Enhances Scenario-Based Learning
The Common Respiratory Diseases Baby comes with a set of scenario cards about healthcare and childcare professionals encountering children with childhood respiratory diseases. These scenarios encourage critical thinking by guiding students through real-world decision-making processes, such as identifying symptoms, determining appropriate care responses, and communicating effectively with parents or medical professionals. You can see an example of one of the scenarios below.
Sample Scenario: You are working as a phone triage assistant at a busy pediatric office. A patient’s mother calls and says that her child had bronchiolitis and was very ill last year. She would like to know if there are any vaccines the child can get this year to prevent bronchiolitis from occurring again. How would you respond to this parent?
Includes Standards-Based Curriculum
This realistic toddler manikin also comes with a downloadable, six-lesson curriculum that covers each illness it simulates. The complete curriculum would take about six hours to teach, but you can also select specific lessons and activities to use independently. The curriculum comes with its own presentation slides, student activities, and assessment tools.
See the curriculum overview here.
Additional Resources
Looking for more health science and Family and Consumer Science (FCS) teaching resources?
- Watch our free, on-demand webinar about training future childcare workers through simulation
- Explore all our health science teaching tools here
- Discover free health science and FCS career exploration lesson plans
